Is King Killing Brian Keene's Characters?

Went running again tonight.  Cold, windy, dark night.  I think part of what drives me to keep running at this point is just how creepy it is to listen to Brian Keene's book, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, as I run.  (Discussed HERE)

The plot revolves around a town that wakes up to discover the sun has failed to come up. In fact, the sky itself is just inky black.  At the edge of town the darkness intensifies -- and those who wander into it never come back.  The darkness is held  at bay by strange writings on the ground.

I both really like and dislike this book!  I get weary of all the drug use. And the motif of the crazy homeless guy who is actually very deep -- the only one who really knows what's going on -- is a well worn story line.  Keene goes to some effort to make his lone Christian character a loon.  Not the interesting kind of loon, like Mother Carmady from the Mist, or the Westboro bunch from real life.  This lady is just -- a edgy, unlikable and paranoid.

Why do I keep reading?  Because I'm scared.  And fear is a great motivator!  I want to know what happens.  Though the book opens with a promise that it isn't going to give a conclusion.

At one point the main character gets a group of people to try an experiment   How  about they make a chain and wander out into the darkness to see what's out there.  The idea is that if trouble arises, they can just pull each other back.  Good idea, right?  NO!  Dumb idea!  The problem with dumb ideas in a novel is that the novelist doesn't have enough other real voices near him to say, "Hey, real  people would never ever never ever sign on to this!  Never ever."  Nope -- like lambs lead to the slaughter, people show up to hold hands and walk into the darkness.  Darkness where dead people call for them to come.  Darkness where everyone who has entered has not returned.  Sure!  Hold hands and go on in -- that's a good idea.

So where did this idea come from?  THE MIST!

"Yo" T hopped up  on the hood of the car with me, speaking quietly so that no one else would hear. "We ain't no punks, but we ain't stupid either.  Ain't you ever seen The Mist?"
"Yeah," I admitted.  That's kind of where I got the idea from."
"Well, if you saw that movie, then you know . . . how  it turned out for  those people.  Ain't no way me and my boys are  going out into that...  Know what I'm saying?"

Well, they do agree to go, because our narrator offers them drugs.  Of course!  You'll wander into the depths of darkness for weed.

Did  you get where the great idea to line up as a chain and wander  into the darkness came from?  The Mist!  Not that  there isn't fair warning.  In the Mist  it didn't turn out well, so of course it's a good idea to try it here!  So ideas from the world of Stephen King are spilling over into Mr.  Keene's books and going to get people killed  over there, too.

It's like Stephen King is now killing off characters in other people's books!

All this might make you think  I  don't like the book.  So I must whole heartedly emphasize just how much I am enjoying this little novel.  I really don't know where Keene is going with this.

Books that actually scare

Has  a book ever given you the willies?  Ever scared you?  When it comes to being creeped out, I'm pretty tough.  I  don't think I've ever been scared reading a Stephen King  book -- never so afraid I couldn't turn the page.  But there are some scenes that have  stuck with me as pretty down right creepy.

• Pennywise appearing to Bev in her bathroom was pretty scary.  Especially when the adult didn't see the blood.  Also the opening, with George, is scary stuff.
• The two women killing each other in the middle  of Castle Rock was scary.
• Digging up a dead  body was scary in Pet Sematary.  (The book has a lot more detail than the movie)
• The rats in 1922 were scary.
• Christine has some great moments when she is on the hunt.  That car is scary!
• The flashes of the two dead girls in Kubrick's The Shining were frightening.
• Monsters coming from a mist. . . great stuff!  And again, scary.  In fact, I think the movie is just as scary as the book was.  The novel is brought to life brilliantly.    

Brian Keene Scared Me:

I got an Ipod for Christmas.  Yes, we open presents early.  This meant an entire world of  audio was opened up to me.  I've been slowly building an audio library at audible.  An Ipod means that I  have something to listen to when I go running.  

I chose to take Brian Keene's Darkness On The Edge Of Town.  I've read a good bit of this book before, but keep stopping.  So, alas, I decided to drive in new.

Oh, you need  to know, I run late at night.  10 or 11pm.

And, I run in a small down, with lots of fields and thick darkness.

I like to run at this time because it's nice and cold,  and I'm naturally a night person.

But, as I ran last night, I found myself actually a bit scared!  The characters finally go to the edge of town to see what is in the darkness.   They encounter the dead!  Strange writing on the ground, and then there are the screams!  None of this is freak out stuff, unless you are running in the dark past long fields.  You start to see things!  That run the other night was probably the closest I've ever come to actually being scared while I read.

Of course, the  Ipod was tucked deep in my cloths. . . I was stuck!  I couldn't easily get to the Ipod to change the program.  I just kept running.  No, those shadows weren't dead people

So, what  books have actually scared you?

Not Stephen King!

Ever notice the number of authors who get compared  to Stephen King?  Or how often we hear, "He/She's the next Stephen King."  Of course, no one writes like Stephen King.  Each writer has their own approach and style.

It is true that people  who enjoy reading Stephen King generally enjoy some of the same other  authors as well.

Here are 6 authors I think in some way fall in the Stephen King box.  Each is wonderful in their own right and has their own unique way of telling a story.

1. Dean Koontz  (My favorite novel: Watchers)
2. Robert McCammon (Swan Song)
3. Brian Keene (The Conqueror Worms)
4. John Saul (I have not read John Saul)
5. Anne Rice (I never finished a Rice novel -- that was written under her name)
6. Richard Laymon (Resurrection Dreams)

Who else gets  lumped in the "like Stephen King" category?

The Man Who Scared Stephen King

I have really enjoyed Gerald Nachman’s book, “Raised On Radio.”  The book leaps neatly from genre to genre, show to show, giving readers the best of each subject and personality.  While some books on old radio are so massive they are nothing more than encylopedia’s – this book does not feel the need to give every detail.

I think radio is really much more scary, and powerful, than television or movies.  In fact, I think two of King’s work have translated nicely to radio – Pet Sematary and Salem’s Lot were both radio plays.  The 3D Mist was also a radio like experience that was nicely done.  I also think The Shining, Dolores Claighborn, and IT would all make great radio plays.

Know who I think would do a good job translating King to radio?  A guy named Arch Oboler.  He was reponsible for a program called “Lights Out Everybody.”  If you haven't’ heart it, quickly rush over to Internet Archive and turn out your lights. Unfortunately, he died in 1986.  Bummer!  (1987 -- that means he could have enjoyed Return of the Jedi without the experience being marred by the prequels!)

Nachman calls Oboler the "Edgar Allan Poe of the genre."

King's love for radio, and in particular Arch Oboler, is discussed on pages 314-315 of the hardcover, in a section titled, "Radio Noir -- Cops  and Grave Robbers."

I do not know where Nachman is getting his quotes from King, because I have long wondered  what King thought of Oboler's work.  I was glad to read these few paragraphs.  Check out the entire book, it's wonderful!

About King (and Oboler), Nachman writes the following:

One o the little boys Oboler scared half to death was the postmodern prince of horror, Stephen King, who has called Oboler “the genre’s prime auteur.”  King heard Lights Out reruns in the 1960s on Dimension X, recalling especially Ray Bradbury’s “Mars Is Heaven!”  “I didn’t sleep in my bed that night,” he remembered.  “That night I slept in the doorway, where the real and rational light of the bathroom bulb could shine in my face.  That was the power of radio at its height.”  Oboler, like Hitchcock, loved merging horror and humor into a gross-out giggle.  “Part of Oboler’s real genius was when ‘Chicken Heart’ ended, you felt like laughing and throwing up at the same time.

Oboler, said King, played on two of radio’s prime strengths: “The mind’s innate obedience, its willingness to try to see whatever someone suggests it see, no matter how absurd; the second is the fact that fear and horror and blinding emotions that knock our adult pins from beneath us and leave us groping in the dark like children who cannot find the light switch.  Radio is, of course, the ‘blind’ medium, and only Oboler used it so well or so completely.”  In radio, King obsverved, we never saw the zipper running down the monster’s back.

On TV, King said, The Shadow and Inner Sanctum over described scenes, whereas Oboler relied on speech, sound, and silence to achieve his effects.  He can’t forget the gruesome, “A Day at the Dentist,” in which a dentist extracts revenge from a patient who, years earlier ruined the dentists’s wife when she was a young girl.  With the patient strapped in his chair, the dentist drills a hole in him (“to let out some of lover-boy”), but the audience is left to guess where – his brain?  Heart?  Genitals?  The lone sound of a burrowing drill left listeners very much in the dark indeed.  Iing singles out radio’s ability to unlock the door of evil without “letting the monster out,” as movies or TV or theater would be forced to, because our eyes demand to know what’s behind the door; our ears leave the solution tantalizingly, and horrifyingly, up in the air.  Yet in the hands of a master radio storyteller like Oboler, we don’t feel heated.  We feel challenged. . . and chilled.

The author of The Shining, Carrie, and Misery remembers how, when Inner Sanctum left radio for TV, it finally made the creeding door visible, “And visible, it certainly was horrible enough – slightly askew, festooned with cobwebs – but it was something of a relief, just the same.  Nothing could have looked as horrible as that door sounded. . .”

There were weaknesses in Oboler's writing.  He was particularly fond of the monologue.  I guess in radio, it's one of the few ways to convey what's going on -- but sometimes Oboler's went on-and-on-and-on.

My favorite Arch Oboler "Lights Out" play was titled "Revolt Of The Worms."  (Brian Keene has a book that reminds me of this short radio play.)  The story "Murder Castle" reminds me very much of the documentary about H.H. Holmes, America's First Serial Killer.

Like King, Oboler was incredibly prolific.  He was a fast writer, known to leave a dinner party at 11pm and return at 1am with a finished script.  Where did he get his ideas?  Nachman fills in this interesting detail, "He often got  ideas  from listening to sound effects records, and took special delight in devising grotesque effects.  His scare tactics included the sound of a man frying int he electric chair (sizzling bacon), bones being snapped (spareribs or Life Savers crushed between teeth), heads  being severed (chopped cabbages), a knife slicing through a man's  body (a slab  of pork cut in two) and, most grisly of all, somebody eating human flesh (wet noodles squished with a bathroom plunger.)"

Does this sound familiar: Nachman quotes Oboler, "I didn't write about little green men. .  . monsters with dripping talons and grotesque faces from the special effects department. . . I wrote about the terrors and monsters within each of us."  (Well, he did write about worms!)  But the quote is very close to King saying he is more interested in the characters than the monsters.

Keene Headed Back To Print

picture credit HERE

If you’re a Stephen King fan, you’re probably already familiar with Brian Keene’s work as well.  I find his writing a lot of fun.  Keene recently got in a battle with his publisher, Dorchester books, who decided to sell his books without paying him. See how I make a long story short?  The full story, from Keene's angle at least, is at www.briankeene.com.   Keene blogged aboutt his crisis over the last year and the chaos it created in his life.  It’s not fun when a publisher messes with you.

Dorchester also publishes Richard Laymon books. Too bad to see some great works in the horror industry mishandled.

Well, Brian Keene is back!  In a partnership between Thunderstorm Books and Keene (called Maelstorm) several limited run small press books will be published.

Blu Gilliand at examiner explains the plan:

In a nutshell, Maelstrom, a partnership between Keene and publisher Thunderstorm Books, is a new line of collectible, limited-run books designed specifically for the small press market. Maelstrom releases will consist of three signed hardcovers limited to 250 copies: a Keene novel, a Keene novella, and a novel by a new author that Keene himself will select. Each set will be priced at $125.  (Gilliand’s full article is HERE.)

Books include A Gathering of Crows, The Rising: Deliverane and Kelli Owen’s debut novel, Six Days.

Keene's writing is scary, engaging and at times frustrating.  But frustrations aside, I like his work, and thus I forgive those things that drive me crazy and just keep reading.  Okay, so what drives me crazy?  In "Darkness  on the Edge of Town" it seems like everyone is a druggie!  It's a town on the edge of a drug bust.  And they sure see a lot in the dark.  Okay. .. but none of that is worth getting hung up over.  The novel has been compared to Under The Dome.  I don't think so!  More like Poe, I would say.

I suspect the grind of publishing can get to a writer.  King recently said:

As of right now, if I died and everybody kept it a secret, it would go on until 2013. There’s a new Dark Tower novel, The Wind in the Keyhole.That comes out soon, and Dr Sleep is done. . . .
. . . I do want to slow down. My agent is dickering with the publishers about Dr Sleep, that’s the sequel to The Shining, but I held off showing them the manuscript because I wanted time to breathe.”

Time to breathe.  Why?  Okay, I'm guessing here. . . but I suspect it is not King's publisher that might be the issue here, but the demands of publishing a Stephen King book.  He doesn't just release a book, he does a whole big book tour.

Brian Keene: Influenced By The Mist

I like what I've read of Brian Keene. In fact, he's one of those authors I plan to read more of. Keene's book Darkness at the Edge of Town looks particularly interesting. One of the things I like about Keene is that he is not at all ashamed to admit that other authors inspired him.

.

This is from Keene's webpage:

.

Q: Was this a homage to The Mist?
A: Not a homage in the way Castaways was a homage to Richard Laymon or Urban Gothic was a homage to Edward Lee, but DotEoT was certainly influenced by The Mist, and the novel proudly wears that influence on its sleeve. The Mist is one of the most important works of horror fiction in the last fifty years, and remains one of my personal favorites (it also influenced The Conqueror Worms).

.

Later Keene writes:

.

Q: Plot-wise, DotEoT seems similar to Under the Dome?
A: In the sense that people are trapped inside a small-town, yes. But both are riffs on a much older theme, and DotEoT was published (in hardcover) a full year before Dome.

.

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=3386

Brian Keene and Under The Dome

Some have noted that Brian Keene's expanded novel, Darkness On The Edge Of Town is very much like Stephen King's Under The Dome. Of course, Keene is often compared (by his publisher) to King. I've only read one Keene novel, THE CONQUEROR WORMS, which I enjoyed very much.

Bookgasm.com gives this summery:

As narrator Robbie Higgins recalls, he and the other residents of the small town of Walden, Va., woke up one morning to darkness. All light had disappeared, along with all electricity and other utilities. No phones, no TV, no radio, no Internet. Just darkness.

As Robbie; his girlfriend, Christy; and his buddy, Russ, struggle along with the other Walden residents to figure out what happened, they soon find that the rest of the world seems to have disappeared, and their town, as Robbie describes it, has been “stuffed into a bottle and covered by a black cloth.” A group of volunteer firemen venture out beyond the town borders, where the darkness seems to expand and thicken. Almost immediately after they vanish from sight, horrific screams are heard by those left behind, and the volunteers never return.

Robbie and his friends then find that the darkness emits strange powers over them. As they explore one evening toward the edge of town, they experience visions of those they once loved — now either dead or simply long-lost — who invite them deeper into the darkness.

http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/darkness-on-the-edge-of-town/comment-page-1/#comment-68610